SCHOOL COMPOSES ITS OWN MUSIC PROGRAM

‘Monthly Music’ slides tunes into lessons, lunchtime to expose kids to various forms

When funding dried up and educators at Del Mar Heights no longer had the money to pay for a music program, they decided to start their own.

The effort, known as Monthly Music, features a new genre each month and a list of important artists and songs for students to learn about. Educators squeeze in the music whenever possible — before school, after school, during lunch and in class.

When students arrive at and leave the campus, they hear songs on the current list coming from a portable music player, and also see a banner celebrating that genre and a flier with more information about the songs, artists and musical styles.

Teachers try to work the monthly genres into their classroom lessons.

Kelly Vietro, who teaches fifth grade at the campus, said she recently incorporated songs from this month’s genre — rock ’n’ roll — into her poetry lessons. She also plays the music as her students work.

The program is a good way to expose children to new types of music, she said.

“They get to learn about music that they normally wouldn’t listen to on their own,” she said, “and they love it.”

This, in turn, teaches students about different cultures and can reinforce history lessons, she said.

Tosh Tudor, a second-grader at the school, said he had fun learning about jazz and country music, and it taught him about history and culture.

Second-grade teacher Paige Rollins said she plays songs from the rotating playlist every morning to help welcome and calm down the children.

Her students said they enjoy the cheery welcome.

“It starts out my day brightly,” said Zoe Zielinski.

Listening to and understanding music can also help brain development, Principal Wendy Wardlow said.

“There are a lot of correlations between music and the mind,” she said.

Sloane McGuire, a fifth-grader at the school, said she thinks listening to classical music is helpful in class.

Wardlow and other teachers at the school came up with the idea for the program in 2010, when there was no longer enough money to pay for a music teacher. They put the lists and information together with the help of a parent and a college student who volunteered for the effort.

Specific genres repeat from year to year, but the artists and songs are different. By the time they’re in sixth grade, students will have learned about more than 50 songs in each genre, including rock ’n’ roll, classical, jazz, country, folk, soul and blues.

It took a while to put the playlists together, but now that they’re done, educators at the school will be able to use them as long as they want, Wardlow said. Best of all, she said, it costs almost nothing.